Commitment in Korea: How one entrepreneur shifted from a dream about the stars to a passion about people

In June 1998, Kwangsug Lee launched HumanLink, the first Korean Internet recruitment system that matched candidates with companies. That company became Incruit, which employs 150 people and is one of the leading online-recruiting sites in Korea. David Niu

The UpTake: After two English-speaking countries, David Niu and his family took a leap into the unfamiliar on the third leg of his “careercation” with a stop in South Korea. Here, he learned about perseverance and passion from a man who had dreams of being an astronomer and instead developed one of the country’s leading online-recruiting sites.

Still enrolled in school, Kwangsug was at a crossroads between the successful launch of Incruit and his university studies. Kwangsug sought advice from his father, an entrepreneur, who recommended that Kwangsug follow his passion—adding that he could always return to school later. So in 1998, Kwangsug dropped out of his prestigious astrology program to focus on Incruit exclusively.

Today, Incruit employs 150 people and is one of the leading online-recruiting sites in Korea. By building Incruit over the last fourteen years, Lee learned a lot about being a CEO and leader. He shared the following three pieces of advice. For another four tips from Kwangsug, click here.

Baking in cultural fit in the interview process— Incruit’s three core values are honesty, innovation, and customer-centricity. Their HR actually evaluates all potential new hires along these three parameters in order to see how they would fit into the company culture. It’s very important to the company that employees embrace those values, and they balance cultural fit with skills fit. Incruit doesn’t just pay lip service to the company’s culture. Instead, they expose the culture and cultural expectations to employees starting in the interview process.

Connect with a big group in a monthly company speech— Once a month, Kwangsug gives a state-of-the-union type speech to the company. At 150 employees, Kwangsug no longer gets the opportunity to interact with each employee, so the speech both personalizes him to employees and provides company updates. It’s also a venue to reinforce company culture, vision, and mission.

David Niu is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and author of Careercation: Trading Briefcase for Suitcase to Find Entrepreneurial Happiness. His current product, TINYpulse, helps hundreds of organizations like Hubspot, OxFam, and GSK get a pulse on how happy, frustrated, and burnt out their employees are before retention sinks and issues fester.

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